Bound together
A giant three-metre-high replica of an ordinary torsion spring clothespeg arrested my wife and me while walking through a sculpture garden in New Zealand some time ago.
Opinion Articles
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Africa’s election year 2024: Twenty principles and truths for Christian political engagement
Africa is a deeply religious continent. So how African individuals and communities understand and express their religions and protect their religious spaces and doctrines from misuse or abuse has implications for wider African society, including the spheres of politics and civil governance. These significantly affect human well-being across the continent.
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Sinicization: Culture or Politics?
In his incisive Christianity Today article titled “Xi Jinping Is Not Trying to Make Christianity More Chinese,” Purdue University professor Fenggang Yang draws a distinction between Sinicization, or the cultural adaptation of religion to Chinese culture, and what he calls “Chinafication,” a more literal translation of the Chinese term Zhongguo hua (中国化) used in the current “Sinicization of religion” campaign.
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The T. B. Joshua story points to a problem in many churches
The recent expose by the BBC on the late prophet T. B. Joshua is heart rending. The reports and eyewitness accounts point to what is without a doubt a massive tragedy on many levels. To witness someone in authority in a church be able to perpetuate so much abuse for so long with complete impunity makes your blood boil.
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Welcome to the chaos of 2024!
2024 is going to be messy – more crises, more elections and ongoing wars. There will also be incredible opportunities to speak truth and hope into some of the most controversial issues of our day. But will we as the UK church be distracted by division and bury our head in the sand? Or will we see the opportunity offered by the difficult questions of our day to extend wisdom, hospitality, and offer a hopeful way forward?
Latest
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Whose side are you on?
By Jay MātengaI love the way Peterson’s Message Bible renders the question and response: Joshua asks, “Whose side are you on—ours or our enemies’?” and the response was, “Neither. I’m commander of GOD’s army. I’ve just arrived.” I launched my 2023 World Evangelical Alliance Mission Commission Leader’s Missions Forecast from this passage. For my January 2024 post, I’ll repeat the introduction of that essay in the hope that it encourages you to take the time to read the rest.
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Cheering them on!
Olga is a survivor. The first time she escaped death was before she was even born. She was a Chernobyl baby. That is, her mother gave birth to her soon after the world’s worst nuclear disaster occurred in Chernobyl in 1986, just 40 kilometres north of Kyiv, close to the Belarusian border. After the reactor of the nuclear power plant exploded, pregnant mothers in Ukraine were ordered to abort their babies. They were told the babies would all be deformed. But Olga’s mother, who lived 400 kilometre
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Openness and hospitality
Today, January 6, is the 12th day of Christmas in the traditional church calendar, the official end to Christmastide and the start of Epiphany, which lasts through to the day before Lent.
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When Jesus himself was a refugee from the holy land
As we have watched the news over the last few years, we have seen many stories of refugees fleeing strife or persecution in the Middle East, from Iraq, from Syria, and now Gaza. Some are displaced and seek sanctuary in safer parts of their own countries, and others flee their own country for other lands. At Christmas time, we also remember that after the birth of Jesus, he too was a refugee from Bethlehem to another land. The story is recorded in Matthew 2:13-23.
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God chose to come into this world without status or power
As the time to celebrate the birth of Jesus approaches, friends and I have been thinking about Jesus’ words recorded in Mark 10:13-16. For years, I thought that ‘receiving the Kingdom of God like a little child’ referred to innocence – or to being trusting. Maybe it does include that. I, for one, feel I have a lot to learn about genuinely trusting God, in our deeply disturbed world. But someone recently pointed out to me that the main defining characteristic of children in first century Palestin
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No Christmas in Bethlehem
Five hundred hushed participants at the European Parliament Prayer Breakfast in Brussels last Wednesday listened intently as Palestinian Christian leader, Dr Jack Sara, told of the sense of hopelessness and wanton destruction that followed in the wake of the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel.
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Antichrist
By Jay MātengaIt should come as no surprise that Māori whakataukī or proverbs tend to be aspirational, even if they also contain a warning. After all, Māori are guided by a strongly collectivist values set. That which is treasured in this world is that which strengthens our relationship bonds—to one another, to our habitats, to the unseen spiritual world around us. There is no greater threat to collectivist values than that which would seek to separate or divide the group.
